User Experience FAIL: Woot.com

Woot.com is a shopping site that sells one item a day. I love Woot (and their shirt site) and have spent an embarrassing amount of money with them. It’s often the first thing I check when I get to my desk in the morning.

In purchasing a Flip for my wife the week before Christmas, Woot did an extraordinary FAIL in user experience and pissed me off in the process.

Most of the time I ship my purchases to my home address. For obvious reasons, I was having this item shipped to my PO Box instead. And since this was just a few business days prior to Christmas, they were running a special on a free upgrade to 2-day Fedex shipping.

When it shipped I received a link for shipping confirmation and it said the item was shipped via Fedex SmartPost and wouldn’t arrive until the 27th. So I sent their support an email:

Hi there, my order # is xxxxxxxx.

I went back and checked here:

(http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2869013)

and judging by the thumbnail I was supposed to get two day shipping to make sure the Flip would get here by Christmas.

I just checked the Fedex tracking link I was emailed:

http://www.fedex.com/Tracking?tracknumbers=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And it says it was mailed by SmartPost and won’t get here until the 27th.

Am I missing something? Was it not supposed to be 2 day shipping?

Just let me know. Thanks!

And their response:

Since FedEx won’t ship to a PO Box, we sent your package via Smart Post so it would be delivered. This is the address you had the package shipped to:

Timothy Grahl
PO Box 4112
Lynchburg, VA 24502

Thanks for Wooting

I didn’t realize FedEx doesn’t ship to PO Boxes and I thought it was weird that it didn’t give me a warning about the shipping method not working when I entered my shipping address. Since I’m not always the most thorough person, I went back and ran through a test order to make sure I didn’t miss something. On the day I took these screenshots they were running a free upgrade to overnight shipping.

Here’s the screen where you input your shipping address:

And the order confirmation screen:

Absolutely NO indication that they wouldn’t actually be shipping the product overnight (or in my case, 2-day).

I attached these images to my email response back to Woot’s customer service:

To be honest, this is pretty frustrating. There is no notice on your site that Fedex doesn’t ship to PO Boxes and I didn’t know that they didn’t. In fact, on your address line 1 it says:

(street address, P.O. box, company name, c/o)

If there had been any indication that the 2 day shipping method wouldn’t work with a PO Box and therefore, make the item late for Christmas, I would have changed the shipping address. However, as it stands I won’t be getting the item in time for Christmas even though I ordered it in plenty of time and was promised two day shipping.

In fact, in doing a test order today the attached screenshot shows up. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that on the same screen you show the shipping address, you also show “Fedex Overnight Shipping” and give no indication that the combination is impossible.

Is there any way at all I can get another Flip shipped overnight so it will be here in time for Christmas? I’ll pay the extra to ship back the first one once it arrives if need be.

And their response back:

It’s understood that po box addresses cannot receive FedEx 2 Day, Ground, or Overnight shipments. Our system will not stop you from providing a po box address should a buyer decide to have the item shipped there instead of their physical address. We will always ship FedEx Smartpost to po box addresses. If we do not allow it, then we will request the physical address or not allow you purchase the product. Unfortunately we cannot ship another unit to you in time for Christmas. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Woot.com doesn’t do a very simple check to see if their shipping method matches my address and it’s my fault?

The first issue of not checking my address against the shipping method is forgivable. But then blaming it on me and refusing to help me out is absolutely ridiculous

Woot customer serviced did a fantastic job pissing off a customer that has made over 30 purchases in the last 12 months.

Woot.com gets a FAIL for user experience.